Scott Lindroth – Syntax (1985)

The funny thing about electronic music is that when it comes out it always sounds like the future, but a few decades later it always sounds so much like the past. Syntax was produced on the Synclavier, the digital synthesizer and sampler that pretty much defined the sound of the 80s, appearing in everything from top-40 pop albums (Michael Jackson’s Thriller) to film scores (Flight of the Navigator) to underground weirdo music (Zappa’s Jazz from Hell) to academic electronic pieces like this one. And yes, the piece does sound very, very 80s, despite its total lack of melodic, harmonic or rhythmic similarity to synthpop or New Wave. But unfortunately, it suffers from a problem that seems to be endemic to computer music of the period: composers didn’t seem to feel it necessary to make their music sound rich and full-textured. It’s not a technological problem, because people in the pop world were very successful at creating rich textures with digital synths. Just listen to the score to Flight of the Navigator. And in fact, Syntax opens with a very satisfying texture, with pitch-shifted samples of someone saying “hello” superimposed on a stream of microtonal drone harmonies — but the more contrapuntal and rhythmic middle section sounds awfully thin and weak.

Like I said, this isn’t a problem limited to Scott Lindroth. I feel the same way about contemporaneous pieces by Morton Subotnick, like And the Butterflies Begin to Sing (1988) — despite thinking his earlier pieces Silver Apples of the Moon (1967) and The Wild Bull (1968) are among the best music ever to come out of the contemporary-classical electronic music world. In fact, out of the totally non-pop-related 80s digital synth pieces I’ve heard, I can only think of one that didn’t feel texturally under-realized, namely Davidovsky’s Synchronisms #9 (1988). And yet I’m sure that at the time, the sounds were new enough that nobody would have thought to criticize the pieces for not being as full-bodied as the Buchla or Moog pieces of the 60s and 70s.

But there’s another feature of Syntax that seems to work better now than it did at the time. Before making this post, I did a little Googling to see if I could find out a little more about the piece, and on JSTOR I came across two different reviews of the album the piece was released on. Both of them remarked unfavorably on the pitch-shifted voices, saying that they sounded comical and reminded the reviewers of Alvin and the Chipmunks. I haven’t talked to anyone about the piece, and it’s possible that most people would agree with that judgment even now, but I sure don’t. In the context of those microtonal sustained tones, or the crying-cat glissandi that accompany the voices at the end of the piece, they come off more creepy than comical — a bit like the unnerving pitch-shifted pickup lines in Anne LeBaron’s Dish (1990). I wonder if it’s because pitch-shifted voices have become so familiar in electronic music that they’re no longer tied to a novelty pop-culture phenomenon from the 50s, and are thus liberated to take on a variety of new meanings.